Akshaya Mukul writes: Gita Press founders and Gandhi – a relationship turned sour

Their relationship started auspiciously with bhakti. In 1926 when the Gita Press launched Kalyan, Hanuman Prasad Poddar, its editor, went to Gandhi with Jamnalal Bajaj. Gandhi had a piece of advice for the novice: Never take advertisements or carry book reviews. Advertisements made tall claims, often false, and once they started coming in, it would be impossible to turn down the revenue. As for book reviews, Gandhi said authors would expect them to be laudatory and honest appraisal may offend, so better not have them at all. Till date, Kalyan does not carry either. In fact, Gita Press has declined the Rs 1 crore cash component of the Gandhi Prize.

This deference, however, did not mean the Gita Press was a fellow traveller with Gandhi. On gyan, for instance. Gandhi’s translation of the Gita – Anashakti Yoga — was turned down by the Press. Gandhi would not accept the Gita as a historical text and the Gita Press would not accept this. Sometimes Gandhi’s articles would appear in Kalyan, a few extracted from Navjivan and Harijan and others commissioned through Jamnalal Bajaj, Mahadev Desai and Pyarelal. In 1935, Gandhi wrote to Poddar from Wardha, “What you are doing … is a great service to god. I feel I am part of what you are doing because you consider me your own and I consider you mine.” And yet three years before, in 1932, Poddar had bristled at Gandhi from his pages.

“These days a big agitation by Dalits is going on in the country that has intensified due to your fast. At various places, people are dining with Dalits and they are being allowed inside temples. Even those in favour of dining with Dalits agree (though I do not equate dining with them as a mark of equality) that they cannot be considered pure until they have a pure bath, wear fresh clothes, give up alcohol and meat or at least stop feasting on dead cattle. Only then co-dining makes sense. But your common dining and temple-entry movement is not even checking if they have fulfilled these norms. What is taking place is mere eating together, letting them inside temples, and allowing them to participate in rituals. No one is talking of upliftment of Dalits but only reiterating their untouchable status. Is this lack of restraint or reform?”

Poddar also showed the mirror to Gandhi, reminding him of his article in Navjivan where he had argued that inter-dining would not remove untouchability. Gandhi stood by every word Poddar had cited. “To understand what I say one needs to understand my conduct for I try to avoid saying anything that contradicts my conduct and doing anything contrary to what I say. And I admit my own weakness whenever my conduct is inconsistent with the opinions I express.” No amount of aggression from Poddar could make Gandhi rethink his new position that caste Hindus had created outcastes who were treated in an irreligious and brutal manner for which they would have to atone. This was not the Gandhi Poddar had met for the first time in 1915 as a young Hindu Mahasabhaite in Calcutta’s Alfred Theatre.

Writing to a friend now, Poddar said Gandhi was a western sadhu in Indian dress whose many ideas he did not agree with and some he found unacceptable. Gandhi became the biggest stumbling block before the traditional Hindu order, and a challenge to it. In 1946 when news came that Prabhakar, a Dalit, presided over a marriage as a priest and Gandhi blessed the couple, Poddar lost whatever respect was left. “Detractors of Hindu religion feel strengthened when they find Gandhi’s action endorsing their belief. The biggest problem is Gandhi considers himself a sanatani Hindu and despite believing in marriage rituals, participates and encourages such un-shastric acts,” he wrote in Kalyan. By the late-1940s, Gandhi had become immensely unpopular with the Gita Press.

In 1949, RSS chief M S Golwalkar was touring the United Provinces after being released from jail for his alleged role in Gandhi’s murder. Himself now free, Poddar presided over a function to welcome Golwalkar at the Town Hall in Banaras. Outside the venue, distraught socialists and communists protested with the slogan “Golwalkar laut jao” (Golwalkar go back) and “Bapu ka hattiara Sangh” (killers of Bapu RSS). Post-Gandhi’s assassination, Kalyan went quiet on him for few months but resumed carrying his old articles. It was Gandhi only in name and as ironical as the peace prize Gita Press has received in his name.

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The writer is author of ‘Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India’